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I really like my Dursts, I've actually moved on from that M700 to an M805 which had a far more robust column. The biggest thing I'd look for in an enlarger these days is glassless neg carriers. While the universal carrier is good for convenience you can't beat a glassless carrier for dust management. In any case any enlarger is better than no enlarger and you'll almost never use movements so I'd get the Omega. This is my dry side at the moment.  Meopta Axomat 5 for 35mm and half frame, glassless carrier, Durst M805 for 6x9 with a universal carrier and a Meopta Magnifax II with glassless 6x6 carrier. People keep giving me enlargers and I can't say no apparently. Megabound fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Aug 14, 2022 |
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Aug 14, 2022 09:14
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Interesting that you're not a fan of the Durst carrier, as that was one of the things I thought was particularly slick about them. Is it just the dust, or are Newton rings a problem too? Another thing that's got me paused is ideally I would want to print every size between half frame and 6x9, but it seems like 6x9 enlargers that aren't 4x5 enlargers are pretty uncommon, and 4x5 enlargers are both rare and expensive. On the other hand, I would love to get into large format someday, and big enlargers probably aren't going to get any cheaper. Probably the thing to do is grab the Omega since I can reasonably expect to make decent prints with it without having to do major repairs or buy anything else, and use my experiences with that to inform an upgrade down the line, if there is one. Thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies.
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Aug 14, 2022 18:39
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Oh, the durst carrier is fine, well designed and does the job. Newton rings aren't an issue as they use ANR glass, it's just the dust issue. And if you're clumsy and crack the glass then you got that issue to deal with as well. Dust ain't so bad with medium format but 35mm and half frame especially can get frustrating. If you've got a glass neg carrier you have 6 surfaces you need to keep spotless, your film and both sides of the glass top and bottom. Much easier with glassless. Another thing to think about is that for each negative size you want to print ideally you have the correct condenser/diffuser for that negative size. Having one for a larger size isn't an issue, your print will just take longer to expose, but you can't go the other way. If that Omega has all of those as well you're saving yourself a lot of headache trying to track down the correct ones for the Durst. Or just own 3 enlargers, I don't have a problem at all.
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Aug 14, 2022 19:11
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That's the "mixing chamber" referred to in this ad right? See any red flags with any of the other stuff? https://sacramento.craigslist.org/pho/d/sacramento-omega-super-chromega/7517516168.html
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Aug 14, 2022 19:57
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That's correct, in colour heads its called a mixing chamber as is mixes all the selected colours together. All looks good to me.
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Aug 14, 2022 20:47
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Hey Megabound, does your 6x9 Durst carrier look like something that could be 3D printed, or nah? The 6x6 glass one I have has some springs I wonder if I could duplicate (or re-use). Also if you wanna do a road trip to Tassie mid next year, I am moving overseas and have nowhere to leave my enlargers... rockear posted:That's the "mixing chamber" referred to in this ad right? Yeah, I would jump on that!
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Aug 14, 2022 21:29
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Yeah, I'll just bring em back on the ferry, the wife will love it. I'm Tasmanian myself actually, would love to pop back down sometime for a photo trip. As for the carrier it's nothing special from memory, no springs holding it in place. I'll refresh myself once I'm back in the country at the end of the month and take some detailed measurements if you need.
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Aug 14, 2022 22:07
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Okay I think I did very well with the Omega. It seems to be in pretty pristine condition and the guy threw in a big Rubbermaid tub of stuff that wasn't in the ad as well. I haven't even dug it all out yet but there's a couple developing tanks and a bunch of spools, a color analyzer, two bulk loaders, two sets of developing trays, an easel, a timer, a machine for mounting slides, another 50mm EL Nikkor lens, a grain focuser, and a bunch of very old chemicals.  
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Aug 15, 2022 08:23
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This happens every single time you go to buy darkroom gear. Oh you want to print? Have my entire darkroom for no extra money.
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Aug 15, 2022 08:34
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Megabound posted:Yeah, I'll just bring em back on the ferry, the wife will love it. I'm Tasmanian myself actually, would love to pop back down sometime for a photo trip. Nice! I am planning on quitting my job at the end of this year and will have 6-7 months of relative freedom before I ship out (eyeing a metalworking course at TAFE, and doing relief teaching to keep the lights on), so let me know if you're in the area. Sludge Tank and I do wet plate every now and again. Definitely keen on details for the neg carrier; kinda tempted to take a punt on that condensor if I can get the other half of the puzzle. Megabound posted:This happens every single time you go to buy darkroom gear. Oh you want to print? Have my entire darkroom for no extra money. Haha, it do be like that. I am picking up some wet plate gear from a guy up in Launceston at the end of the month 
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Aug 16, 2022 09:55
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So i'm trying to print 6x9 negatives on 16x20, such that the image will fill almost the whole paper. I'm OK cropping some of the negative (the aspect ratios are way different). I'm enlarging using a regular non-XL Beseler 23c with a 100mm lens right now. Unfortunately it doesn't quite give me enough coverage to completely fill the 16x20 paper. From what i'm reading I think I might be able to try a wider enlarging lens, like an 80mm. Is that correct? Wider would give me more coverage on the paper? Obviously in an ideal world i'd get something like a 23c XL that extends a little higher, but I haven't been able to find one in the short time i've been looking. 80mm lenses are cheap/plentiful so I thought i'd try that first.
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Oct 4, 2022 19:38
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Is the head able to rotate? Doing extra big prints horizontally is common practice.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:37
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Ethics_Gradient posted:Is the head able to rotate? Doing extra big prints horizontally is common practice. It is, but I don't have a great surface to project onto. Keeping everything vertical would be ideal, at this point.
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Oct 4, 2022 20:42
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The 80mm lens will most likely not cover a 6x9 negative.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:02
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Megabound posted:The 80mm lens will most likely not cover a 6x9 negative. I think i'm ok with that, as i'll have to crop anyway to fill the single-size 16x20 easel i'm using.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:05
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Spent the weekend in the darkroom, been too long since I've had the chance to and boy I had a great time. This is what my setup looks like now, I also took the opportunity to teach some people wet printing so all 3 of these guys were getting used at the same time.  Some 8x10 on Ilford warm tone fibre   Exposing a step wedge for some 12x16   Some 12x16 for the loungeroom  More warm tone 8x10  5x7 fibre    And some photos taken by one of my students Megabound fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Jan 29, 2023 |
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Jan 29, 2023 10:13
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Very cool. Good on you keeping the craft going.
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Mar 5, 2023 03:57
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Thanks, I think it's important and valuable. Was actually printing today and had a student in as well, really happy with how this one came out. 
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Mar 5, 2023 11:06
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Reflections are always good. I really need to get up to the school and utilize our wet lab. I'm sitting on four or five 120 rolls and a couple 35mm and I don't even remember what's on them.
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Mar 5, 2023 12:45
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That looks really good megabound. I especially like the shadows that the letters make on the car’s interior as a detail.
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Mar 5, 2023 16:04
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It's new enlarger day... An Omega D2 large format enlarger with all the masks I'll ever need. Unless I start shooting 8x10 I should be good for enlargers from here on out! Very excited to get it cleaned up and making prints.
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Mar 15, 2023 23:59
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Dry side update
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Mar 17, 2023 09:58
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Quick question: can you enlarge 6x9cm negatives with the same lens that you use for 6x6cm? I don't expect absolute perfection (those negatives come from box cameras and folding cameras) but i do want it to be good enough to see the imperfections of the camera rather than the enlarger.
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Mar 17, 2023 20:26
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LimaBiker posted:Quick question: can you enlarge 6x9cm negatives with the same lens that you use for 6x6cm? You might get away with it but you may not get complete coverage, ideally you want a 105mm lens for 6x9
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Mar 17, 2023 23:05
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I’ve done a lot of salt printing using digital negatives exclusively, I did some calibration and developed an adjustment profile to do my first ever silver gelatin print. This was contact printed with a nightlight I mounted on the ceiling. Also I know this thread is mostly dead but if anyone is looking for a cool photography discord server without a ton of idiots involved I’m an admin here and it’s very chill: https://discord.gg/onemorestop
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Mar 17, 2023 23:08
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Nice print, looks really great
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Mar 17, 2023 23:19
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I’ve been printing 4-color gum bichromates for a couple years now and haven’t been real satisfied with my black layers so I decided to finally try out silver POP like vandykes and kallitypes to see how these alt processes might improve my workflow. There’s plenty of issues (grain seems to be paper choice, not enough sensitizer used, stains from poor washing or fixing) but I’m kinda pleased with my first vandyke:
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Mar 31, 2023 00:41
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That's fantastic 😍
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Mar 31, 2023 02:12
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Nice print, I’ve found that toning with gold will produce deeper black in salt prints, not sure if it would work for van dyke.
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Mar 31, 2023 05:51
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That is very cool, I need to try out alt processes some time
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Mar 31, 2023 10:14
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Did some printing tonight, enlarged some 35mm to 12x16. That's 260x the area, 16x scale, and it looks so good.  Amazing how much detail you can get out of a 25x19mm negative Megabound fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 12:39
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I blacked out the bathroom this morning to do some prints/develop some film today, but only really did the latter. I had a mix of 4x5, 120, and 35mm to develop and having two tanks on at once was enough to keep me too busy to do much printing (did a test strip or two). Still, felt good - I had a roll of 120 I was trying to load in daylight with a changing bag that I spent 20 aggrevating minutes wrestling with, as soon as I took it out in the darkroom it went on the reel first go. Any tips for printing dense negs? I had some Tri-X I pulled to 100 last year (only film I had on me, bright summer day) and stand developed.
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Apr 12, 2023 09:25
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Double-posting, but I've since sold my darkroom, moved to the US, and as of yesterday, bought another (mostly complete) darkroom: Have been scouring local Marketplace sites for weeks looking for something suitable (either a 6x6 or 4x5 enlarger with a complete setup; piecing together a darkroom individually is a losing proposition financially), and found something "close enough", an "enlarger and darkroom stuff" mentioned in a Marketplace ad for a garage sale with no pictures. After messaging the seller and getting a few pictures of everything, I decided it looked complete enough to take a punt at $100, and drove across town to pick everything up.  This enlarger is not the best fit for me since it only came with a 50mm f/4 Componon and 35mm neg carrier, but I decided to buy the lot anyways since I was already there and it still seemed like an OK proposition at first glance (more on that later). I have a decent 80mm lens on its way over from Australia that I saved from my old darkroom, and a 6x6 negative carrier isn't ruinously expensive. Wish I still had my 3D printer. I know you can print B&W with a colour head, and even found an table with equivalency values for Kodak's VC filtration system in the documentation, but trying to figure out Ilford equivalents took a bit of digging and dealing with dead links before I found these tables (further research indicated Beseler uses the same values as Kodak, so I added that). It also came with the fancy stablised power supply, and a digital timer that mostly works (the fraction-second function may not be working, need to investigate further).  It also came with a colour analyser, as well as some 4x5 tanks with hangers for doing 4x5 colour prints. I have been a bit curious about RA4 since watching that In An Instant video of 20x24 RA4 reversal process, so this another reason to keep an eye out for some cheap print drums I guess. Because I need another rabbit hole to go down, of course.  Big stack of paper that is probably about the same age as me. I'll play around with it, but plan is to buy some fresh 8x10 multigrade with my next B&H order.  Two easels, including a big boi.  The lady said there was a safelight and I saw a little Brownie safelight box, but it looks to only be the dome (for an obsolete screw mount). Fortunately it also came with a 4x5 contact printer that has an integrated safelight, so I can just put that on its side with the top open and get by for now. Am actually hoping to use it for contact printing at some stage, but Google tells me it'll need a lower wattage printing bulb to work with modern darkroom paper. Print dryer:  Also came with a bunch of books, some of which look pretty useful. There were two stock photography books from the very early 90s which have some  early computer graphics. And this one, about which my first thought was "this is basically a paedophile's Rolodex": Came with another box containing the usual assortment of ancient chemicals, a broken selenium meter, and other assorted obsolete/useless doodads. There are a few things that look like they might be useful for wet plate, which is a nice bonus. But what's this...?  Did not even notice it when I was having my very casual paw through the goods before handing over the hundred bucks, but inside is a pretty much pristine Leica III rapid winder, which completed eBay auctions tell me is worth at least $600. Score! I don't have a Barnack or plans to get one, so this one is going to be sold to fund more paper/chemistry/a future 4x5 enlarger. Ethics_Gradient fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Sep 17, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 16:37
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Hell yeah good find. I found dichro heads more hassle than they're worth for black and white printing, filters were just easier and quicker, but I also have no desire to do RA4.
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Sep 17, 2023 21:40
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Megabound posted:Hell yeah good find. I found dichro heads more hassle than they're worth for black and white printing, filters were just easier and quicker, but I also have no desire to do RA4. Am I correct that I could just set it to no filtration on the head and use the Ilford multigrade filters below the lens? It does seem a lot easier, I definitely don't need the super fine controls with a dichro head at my current skill level. I am a real sucker for (good) instant photography because I like the quick feedback* so am kinda keen to try RA4 reversal at some point; since I'd have the chemicals on hand in that case I could see myself having a go at printing colour from negatives while I'm at it. *Tonight, that feedback was "no, idiot, you actually haven't figured out what is wrong with your plate holder and/or workflow."
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Sep 18, 2023 04:22
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Yeah that's right, and that's what I'd be doing for black and white
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Sep 18, 2023 04:29
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Got a beautiful Gilkon 4x5 enlarger a while ago and gave it a good clean and service. It's gorgeous. Not as nice to use as my Omega to the right of it but certainly much prettier. 
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Oct 2, 2023 11:14
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I just bought what seems like almost an entire dark room off Craigslist for $50. The only thing I'm missing is chemicals. It's been almost 20 years since I've used an enlarger or made prints. Do I have the room for any of this? No Do I have a million other projects I need to finish first? Yes Did I just get into woodworking? Yes Do I have tons of other hobbies already, like motorcycles, banjos, computers and weight lifting? Yes Do I have a newborn who I give all of my attention to? Yes Do I know why I did this? Not really. So as far as lenses go for this thing. I have a 50mm so I can make 35mm prints. Is there anything I should watch out for as far as crappy brands, fungus growth etc? 
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Oct 6, 2023 00:01
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Unless you're doing real big enlargements then I'd not worry too much about lens brands. Yeah do keep an eye out for fungus and other things of that nature with the lenses but because there's no focus helicord or any fancy mechanics in enlarger lenses they're usually very easy to service and clean up. If you really want to keep an eye out for top quality lenses then look for Rodenstock, Minolta, Nikon and Schneider-Kreuznach. Anyway, that Beseler is a lovely enlarger, great find!
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Oct 6, 2023 00:11
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Thank you! I was pleasantly surprised when the guy opened the trunk of his car. The ad had to picture and was just a sentence or two long. I don't think I'll be doing anything more than 8x10 so I'm set. Has anyone used hue bulbs as safe lights? My whole potential darkroom is lit with them and I'm wondering if I can just turn them full red. It looks like there are mixed opinions about it online.
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Oct 6, 2023 01:45
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